Tales Of a Madman Underground- Karl's many Conflicts!

     Recently I have been reading a book called Tales of a Madman Underground as a part of our "Coming of Age" unit.  The main character is Karl Soemaker.  He is in High School and is in a herapy group because he has some issues.  The therapy group is self proclaim "The Madman Underground".  The story takes place in a little town called Lightsburg, Ohio that nobody has ever heard of.  Lightsburg is a fictitious town although there is a Lightsburg Road in Ohio that actually exists.  It is taking place in 1973.  The setting is kind of significant because one of the goals of Karl is to get out of Lightsburg.Karl has many problems in his life.  He has many conflicts that complicate his life way too much for any teen to handle.


       First off he has a drunk, drug addict, irresponsible want-to-be hippie mother who always takes Karl's had earned money and spends it on booze and pot.  Also she always brings home random men and has mood swings that hurt Karl and her many, many, many cats which is also another problem.  When Karl's Mom once again stole money from him this is how he felt.


     "I pasted Mom's IOU into my account book and refigured the total.  $2,937.41.  One way or another, since ninth grade I had been making about six grand a year, most of it in off-the-books stuff like yard work and ad sales and carrying sofas.  That worked out to Mom having taken about a half a year out of three, or one out of every six dollars that I made."  I think this is an extremely optimistic way to look at it and this quote really speaks into the relationship that Karl has with his mother.  If my mo did this tome I think that I would be extremely mad at her as would most people, but for some reason Karl isn't.  I think that this is because he has given up and took the optimistic road as not to totally feel bad for himself and the life that he lives.  Instead of being eternally mad at his unreliable mother, he has decided to make it a part of his life.  As taxes take away a portion of normal people's incomes, Karl has decided to make it a fact of life that his mother takes away a portion of his.  Karl's mother is truly the child in the relationship of mother and son in the Shoemaker family.


     Another big conflict that Karl's father died which pushed Karl into the position of man of the household, money provider, and carer of mother.  Since Karl's dad died there was no one to keep Karl's mother in line and from becoming a drunk, drug addict, irresponsible want-to-be hippie.  Karl's dad was a mayor and a very important man in Lightsburg while he was alive and had a lasting influence on Karl.  This is shown because he is always bring his dad into things throughout the book where he finds himself quoting things that his dad used to say.  This shows that he really cared about his father and that his death really did affect everyone in his family.  It threw Karl into sadness and it threw his mother into a life of alcohol, drugs, and trying to be a hippie.


     Thirdly, another huge conflict is his relationship with his best friend crumbling, his struggle to try to be normal and if it is the right way to live his life, and his struggle with his personal identity.  His best friend is Paul and he used to be very good friends with him.  This is shown in this quote.


     “I needed Paul really bad and he was there; I couldn't imagine how bad it would have been not to have anybody.”This shows that to Karl, Paul was a friend that could be there when it really mattered.  In this case it was when he was at his dad's funeral.  I think that this quote really speaks into life.  I think that this really speaks into how important good friends are and how valuable they are when you are going through something tough.  Everybody needs a real friend that they can go to and rely on when they are going through something really tough.  This is probably a very relatable topic to many teens as everybody (usually) has someone who can do this for them.  Despite this great friendship and this close bond, Karl lost this in a struggle to be normal and to get away from his therapy group name-tag.  He ignored Paul in an effort to be normal and not be buddy buddy with people in the therapy group since Paul is in the group too.  When he told this to a new kid in town named Marti, she ended up telling him exactly how she felt and gave him a wake up call.  The quote is,


     ""So that's why you said keeping friends is hard.  What a jackass."  Marti pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.  "Maybe I'm just weird but I don't think you should throw away great friends just to sit around all year singing I'm-normal-I'm-normal-I'm-normal to yourself.  Your friends are not like a ... a hairstyle or something."  I think that this outburst by Marti was really strong and really spoke into Karl's struggle to find his personal identity and his struggle to find the right path.


     Overall, The Tales of the Madman Underground has been very interesting so far.  Karl's many conflicts are interesting and I can't wait to read their solutions.  It also used our vocab word cronies on page 195.  As interesting as this book was though, I got swept up into the book Paper Towns by John Green which I finished extremely quickly.  It was one of the best books that I have read this year and John Green is one of my favorite authors.  Looking for Alaska is also very good and is also by John Green.  It has been a very good weekend of books.